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As some who started similarly as an indie developer (albeit mostly for macOS) back in 2005 and still doing it (on the side now), it's a dream and lifestyle that are very desirable for me since (similarly to the OP) I've learned that people made a living this way in the Mac world.

I left a well-paying engineering day job in 2009 while earning only $500/month on my indie apps in the hope of growing the business. The Mac/iOS developer conferences scene was great at that time ( NSConference, anyone) and I made a lot of connections and dev friends with whom I'm in contact still many years later. The dev community is still pretty good and helping.

Marketing apps has become a real hard problem these days, though, because most of the press doesn't care about apps anymore, unless they are from the big corp, or they just focus on Apple's own news and rumours.

Still, it's very fulfilling to see people who use your apps and recommend them.


I searched for what are the top stories in HN today and one of the results was that OpenAI released ChatGPT 5? WTF? Also about Rust 2.0. Also, the sources listed were strange, not HackerNews, although it did list Hackernews URL on top, but not in sources. https://imgur.com/a/AoFiEQt


From the web site: Instead of simple voting, which results in sub-par and biased decisions, Next Decision’s process forces people to make the hard choices to arrive to more robust decisions that the whole team can stand behind.


Been using Bunch.ai for daily tips for quite a while. Some were very helpful. I wasn't so good at keeping up with new features and tips, though. This will give me another reason to try it. Hopefully, this new feature is as helpful as it can be.


Woop woop! Thats cool :) working hard to bring you back, grayprog!


Trickster is something I use every day, many times a day. ScreenFlow is great for screencasts.

Would like to add a few other Mac apps that I like:

DEVONthink — https://devontechnologies.com — is a fantastic Mac app for organizing documents. It's a desktop Evernote replacement for me. (25% off)

Cashculator - https://cashculator.app - Personal finance with a focus on planning and "what-if" scenarios. Like a spreadsheet. (50%, no subscription).


How do you create the C interfaces from C++ code?


I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking, but it’s just basically writing a C header file as an API, but the implementation is in a source file that is in C++.


I see, so you're just writing the bridge code yourself. OK, I do the same in Objective-C++, so at least it gives me an object-based interface, as well. But saving this step and having a direct Swift <-> C++ would be helpful.


Yeah for me it's just about keeping Obj-C out of the project. It's enough to have two languages, I don't want to unnecessarily add a third.


Don't you already have 3 languages to think about? Swift, C and C++?


The C API is usually syntactically valid C++, so I don’t think of it that way. It’s just an API. Implementation is still in just two languages.


I mean, you also have to be careful to return pointers and not smart pointers and so on. It can be a bunch of work if you need to write a bunch of freestanding functions to wrap the c++ object methods.


Well, you won't return smart pointers if your header file is in fact a C API, since smart pointers are C++ only.

It's usually as simple as calling data() on a vector or std::string (as well as having a function to return the length or size of the data buffer). And if you wrap your header file in the normal C externs, it shouldn't compile if you do things that are not allowed in C, if I remember.

But you are right it can be a lot of work if you have a large surface area. I try to stick to tight, focused APIs, and data is normal C structs which work fine in C++ as well.


Voltswagen - Resistance is futile


I always wondered why there is no "is" in this phrase. Why is it not "This page is intentionally left blank". I hoped this article would answer it, but no. It does show the is in [] to mark that's it's kinda missing. Anyone knows why there's no "is"? Does it ring wrong to you without "is"?


Because "left" works fine as the verb and doesn't require "is". To me, it flows better in speech with "is", but that's a subjective opinion and probably a culturally-influenced one; British people use that construction less than Americans like me, in my experience.


It would be more correct to add “was” since it happened in the past (the act of leaving it blank). Not necessary at all because “left blank” is already past tense.


This page intentionally left blank.

"is" intentionally omitted.


not to me.

does 'he eats faster than I [do]' seem wrong to you? it's a different problem ('than' as conjunction vs 'than' as preposition)[1] but to similar efect.

[1] https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/than-i-v...


To me, "This page has been left blank intentionally" would sound the best, but eh.


"page intentionally left blank" seems kosher to me


Omit needless words?


Are you guilty of being a TL;DR programmer?


I think once you start falling into those patterns, whether at work or on a personal project, it's time to move on, recenter, and possibly reevaluate your career choice.


Yes. Gruber confirmed and there is a place on the site where OS X is mentioned.


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